RAND NextGen

Passion + policy can change the world.

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What Is NextGen?

RAND's NextGen initiative is about helping you change the world—now and for generations to come. If people have the best evidence available on critical issues like climate change, mental health, and racial equity, then together we can find solutions that improve our lives, our relationships with one another, and our communities.

NextGen has three main goals:

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Spark Interest in Public Policy

We're helping people deepen their understanding about how policy issues affect their everyday lives.

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Foster Civic Engagement

Civic engagement is low. We're inspiring and empowering people to get back into the public square.

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Tell Stories that Matter

Stories about policy are really about people. We're telling those stories in new and compelling ways.

Latest Projects

  • Millennial aged journalists recording a podcast and discussing their work.

    RAND x Poynter: Custom Policy Education for Journalists

    RAND is partnering with the Poynter Institute to create innovative educational opportunities for journalists. Programming will focus on breaking down the policy research process and how policy issues affect the general public.

  • Tackling Truth Decay

    Truth Decay is the declining role of facts and analysis in American life. RAND has launched an information campaign on social media to help the public understand how this phenomenon works, its consequences, and how to stop it.

  • Artistic, abstract representation of data

    RAND Art + Data: Artist Residency Program

    Through RAND Art + Data, four groundbreaking artists used RAND research as their inspiration for visual storytelling. The result is a novel form of data expression that challenges how we think about policy analysis.

  • The words Hacking Equity on a black background with abstract lines and squares, image by Peter Soriano/RAND Corporation

    RAND, Pardee RAND, and AUCC Partner for Equity Hackathons

    By connecting emerging leaders of color from Morehouse, Clark Atlanta, and Spelman with experienced policy analysts from RAND and doctoral candidates from Pardee RAND Graduate School, the equity hackathon series run by the Pardee RAND Tech + Narrative Lab and RAND's NextGen Initiative spark a wide range of fresh insights and creative explorations.

Upcoming Activities

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Meet the NextGen Leadership Team

Learn More About RAND

Who We Are

RAND is a research organization dedicated to deep knowledge and ingenuity. We are nonpartisan and nonprofit, committed to solving the toughest problems facing the world today.

Our experts dig deeply into issues that directly impact the lives of people everywhere, including healthcare, equity, energy & the environment, and employment & jobs.

RAND also educates the policy leaders of tomorrow through the Pardee RAND Graduate School, which offers a full-time Ph.D. program in policy analysis—the first and largest of its kind in the country.

Trending RAND Research

  • RAND Gun Policy in America logo

    Informing the Gun Policy Debate

    RAND's Gun Policy in America initiative provides information on what scientific research can tell us about the effects of gun laws. Our goal is to establish a shared set of facts that will improve public discussions and support the development of fair and effective gun policies.

  • Person standing in a field looking toward mountains in the distance. Photo by Ivana Cajina/Unsplash

    How to Transform Mental Health Care in the United States

    With scientific advances, Medicaid expansion, and political consensus on the importance of improving mental health, the time is ripe for transforming the U.S. mental health system. This will mean structural reforms that address patients' challenges in finding, accessing, and receiving high-quality and timely care.

  • Aerial map image by Google Earth

    Environmental Racism: How Historic Redlining Continues to Affect Communities

    Starting in the 1930s, neighborhoods across America were redlined—marked on government maps as too hazardous, as in, too Black or too immigrant, for federal home loans. When zoning officials needed somewhere to put a new factory or freeway, those redlined neighborhoods were like a bullseye that they hit again and again.

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Contact Us

RAND NextGen partners with organizations on special projects that spark interest in public policy and empower young people to make change. If you're interested in such a collaboration, or if you're simply looking for more information about the initiative, email us at nextgen@rand.org